[Dune-devel] Request about the /usr/bin/dune filename

[Anil Madhavapeddy]

On 21 Jan 2019, at 15:52, Jö Fahlke <jorrit at jorrit.de> wrote:
> 
> Am Mo, 21. Jan 2019, 15:10:18 +0000 schrieb Jeremie Dimino:
>> I am the original author of the dune build system [1] for the OCaml
>> language. I'm writing to you as we are having trouble getting our
>> software accepted in Debian. Indeed, it has been suggested that the
>> "dune" package name and "/usr/bin/dune" filename should be reserved
>> for your Dune project which is already in Debian, in case you would
>> like to use these names in the future.
> 
> This sound like there has been some previous discussion somewhere (e.g. Debian
> mailinglists or bugtracker).  Any chance you can point us to such discussion?
> 
> Also, Debian buster just went into freeze, so am I assuming correctly this is
> not urgent at this point in time (our Debian connection is kind-of busy at the
> moment as far as I know, but his input would certainly be valuable…

Dear Jö,

Thanks for considering our request! The Debian thread is over at:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2019/01/msg00227.html

The concern seems to stem from the fact that libdune may eventually
have a metapackage called dune, as opposed to a /usr/bin/dune.
This shouldn’t be a concern for our OCaml Dune, since the Debian
package could reasonably be called libocaml-dune or similar.

The real issue is the suggestion that we rename the existing command-line
name to something else. This is a huge amount of work given that it is
embedded in hundreds of OCaml packages as a command-line invocation.
Given that libdune isn’t using the binary /usr/bin/dune name directly, we’d
really appreciate being able to use that.

In case there’s any confusion, we are of course also happy to add a
README note pointing anyone who is looking for libdune to your library.
I am CCing Stéphane Glondu who is the maintainers of the OCaml packages
in Debian.

regards,
Anil